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The Healing Wisdom of Birds: The Spirit of the Dove, by Lesley Morrison

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

The dove is one of those birds whose imagery seems universal. It is a symbol of hope, purity, and faith, but many people would never think to look any deeper into its complex and ancient past. While researching for my book, The Healing Wisdom of Birds, I poured through a vast pile of mythologies, goddess images, and religious associations centered upon birds and found a history of the dove much more intriguing than the modern day archetype.

If we cast an eye back toward the civilizations of ancient Crete, Egypt, and Greece, we can see the dove predominate as a cultural icon, harmonizing the apparent duality of sexuality and spiritual love. Although revered as a symbol of peace in many places, the dove was usually seen as the embodiment of the Goddess and her divine powers. In Mycenaean iconography, the dove and goddess motif appeared as early as the 16th century BCE. This icon later spread throughout Greece, eventually evolving into the Greek goddess Aphrodite, the world’s favorite deity of amour. Aphrodite (Venus in the Roman pantheon) had the dove as her primary bird companion—not as a symbol of hope or faith, but as the profound essence of fertility that springs from sexual and emotional love.

In the ancient Minoan pantheon, the goddess who overruled fertility and procreation had the dove as her sacred bird. The dove personifies the idea of union with the source of life that sexual energy and spirituality both strive to fulfill. It is an enduring symbol of the soul but at the same time reveals the connection between earthly love and the human need to reunite with the divine. Doves, like the goddesses they adorned, have brought together the fundamentals of the human experience in mythologies, art, and many religions, unifying divine love with erotic love into one spiritual experience. This reveals to us the undeniable relationship between the two aspects of human nature.

But later cultures downplayed the dove’s role as the sacred image of sexuality and, as time passed, alienated the dove from its primal symbolic foundations. The dove remains a lingering presence in the modern world, adorning holiday cards and church paintings, but the dove carries such a complex wisdom that is long-cherished and universally celebrated. As the epiphany of Aphrodite, the dove was a potent force of fertility and higher love. Later, this bird came to be the sacred bird of Bacchus, the Roman god of fertility, wine, and ecstasy. Many of these associations are distant today, and frowned upon by more "conservative" organizations and religious belief systems.

But why the dove? How does a quiet, ground-feeding little bird come to evoke such potent imagery from culture to culture?

It is not a high-flying predator like the hawk, or an entertainer like the blue jay, or a graceful swimmer like the swan. And yet its mythologies abound and its presence celebrated for its quiet, humble, and unrivaled purity. The dove mates for life, expressing that old-fashioned ideal of loyalty and true love. They are affectionate and amorous birds, and demonstrate unconditional love toward their companions and their young. The dove reminds the universal mind of the contentment and joys of domestic bliss.

But it seems to signal something higher and more esoteric than just domestic simplicity. It is a purpose to be found, an ideal to pursue, and a gentle nudge toward the light of something more divine than ourselves. There are, of course, many such birds that inspire the human heart to inner exploration, but the dove carries a unique place in the grand sphere of bird symbolism. In the Tarot, the dove is seen nesting in the goblet on the ace of cups card, gracefully depicting the everlasting life of the spirit and the quest for the Holy Grail. When we look at history’s spiritual avatars, like Buddha, Christ, Mother Mary, and many powerful deities in comparison, like Zeus, Inanna, Venus, and Hachiman, we find the dove perching nearby as a loyal companion and sometimes, an alternate form.

Many stories of divine visitations include a radiant white dove as a symbol of God, or alternately, the spirit of God. In the Bible, John the Baptist commented how the spirit of God descended upon him like a dove (Matthew 3:16), and most people know of the dove’s role on Noah’s ark, signaling dry land after the flood. Many cultures, even today, have symbolically released doves as a gesture of freedom, hope, and most predominantly the release of the spirit from the confines of physicality after death. A more contemporary ceremony involves the releasing of doves at weddings to signal the promise of fidelity, love, and a peaceful home (although this is not a practice that holds the doves' best interests in mind).

Although the dove has such an extensive symbolic past, the bird’s fame, particularly as the symbol of peace, was solidified in 1949 by Pablo Picasso, when the World Peace Congress in Paris chose his lithograph, La Colombe ("The Dove") as its emblem. From that point, the dove became the symbol of the peace movement, and has remained such an integral part of the human psyche ever since. Many people in the busy modern world walk by such birds, indeed all birds, with very little thought as to what they once stood for. Researching over forty birds for The Healing Wisdom of Birds, I was cast back in time when everything had some kind of otherworldly meaning, when each individual bird was once a god or goddess, or carried a powerful message to the human spirit.

I hope the distant past of bird symbolism finds a new light in the world. As they inch closer and closer to environmental disaster, birds need a voice in the desolate wilderness of civilization. So the next time you wander outdoors, cast an eye upward to see what wise and ancient creature may be watching you from its perch—it may just be a god in feathered guise.

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2011. All rights reserved.

I recently lost my 15-year-old son to cancer. I contacted a medium and was told that my son is earthbound. Is he here with me? What signs will he show me? There was a strange number on my phone and on my friend's phone only minutes apart. We tried to call back the number but it says it can't receive incoming calls. I'm wondering if this was him trying to contact me. My son also said that he would send me a yellow bird. His birthday was last weekend and his friend mentioned that she saw two yellow birds and thought it was strange because it's winter. I'm so sad that I didn't see them. Will he send them to me again? What other signs will he send me? I try to do automatic writing but it doesn't work. I also haven't dreamed of him yet and I'm wondering why. I'm reading many books on the afterlife and trying to learn all I can. I miss him so much and always talk to him out loud. Please, any answers will help. Thank you so much.

Jennifer

Astrea:

I'm so sorry for your loss. I recently lost my Daddy to cancer. Cancer is a terrible thing to watch, and we all feel so helpless. It's heartbreaking and it certainly feels unfair when it takes a young person like your son.

You are still grieving too much to dream of your son right now. In about a year, your son will be able to come to you more often, and you'll see him in your dreams. (It isn't unusual for it to take a year for a recently departed spirit to begin to communicate with us.)

It's hard for your son to watch how sad you are, and because he's in Heaven at the moment, he's still in some transition from life to afterlife. Try to have some patience about that. I know it's very hard.

I have learned to take some comfort from the truth that people come here, do their jobs, and return to Paradise. I didn't always feel this way, but the more I live, the more evidence I see that it's true. Otherwise, why would sweet children be taken from us? Your son did everything he had to do here, and now he's an Angelic Spirit.

I'm sure the yellow birds your friend saw were a message to you from him; otherwise she wouldn't have mentioned them to you at all. He didn't send them to you because he isn't ready to do that. He doesn't want to upset you any more than you already are. If you arranged other signs with him, they will begin to be revealed to you at the end of your first year without him.

As for the phone, I'm sorry to say it was a wrong number from a pay phone that registered on your caller I.D. When he does call, it will be from an unknown number. Unfortunately, when spirits call us, we're not allowed to call back.
Write that off as a coincidence.

He would call you if he could, but it usually takes at least a year for that to happen. By then, it will seem like the most natural thing in the world for you to dream about him every night and have long visits there in your dreams. If you get him to show you around when you start doing that, you'll see that it's nice where he is, for he is NOT earthbound.

Make sure that you're getting some other kinds of counseling in your search for Enlightenment, because you have to be certain the people you're working with have the right sort of ethics. Speaking with the departed is very tricky because we all have wishful thinking working on us.

I know that Daddy and I will be together again and that you and your son will have many opportunities to see one another and be together in the afterlife and in other incarnations.

If you seek comfort in loving others more and eliminate all drama from your life, you can open the doorway to Spirit faster than studying any book or speaking with any medium.

*****

Susyn:

I'm so sorry for your loss. There is nothing more confusing or unsettling than when children pass before their parents do.

While it can take some time for a spirit to cross over into the light, I don't sense that your son is earthbound. However, he can still be near you and send you many signs of his presence. The difficult part for those of us who lose loved ones is figuring out how to trust and recognize these signs.

The phone calls you and your friend received were more likely to be computer solicitors than any spiritual phenomenon, even though these incidents were just minutes apart. Currently, telephone sales calls now are filtered through a computer, which can trigger calls to one random number after the next.

Spirits can send messages to their loved ones through birds, animals and events that may appear synchronistic. You can be certain that if you miss a message from your son, another will soon follow. Now that you are watching for them, it should not be long before a sign appears to you directly.

Some of the signs you can expect to see are animals or birds appearing out of season, strong smells or aromas that you directly associate with your son, personal items of his that appear in strange places, or running across people or items that seem to directly mirror his words or interests. Most of these signs will appear unexpectedly, which will further confirm that you're dealing with more than wishful thinking.

One thing to keep in mind is that you may be trying too hard in your attempts to connect with him through automatic writing, or wishing too hard that he will come to you in your dreams.

Sometimes when we're emotionally close to a situation or drowning in grief, it's difficult to open the door to communication with the spirit world. This is a wonderful opportunity for you to study and learn more about this process. To get started, you may want to consult a professional medium who can contact your son directly.

As one who channels professionally, I've found that spirits are using dreams less and attempting to reach their loved ones in more direct ways instead. They have discovered more powerful and efficient ways to make their presence known, as well as the option of sharing messages via a psychic or channeler.

You could still have dreams about him, but these may take some time to manifest as you both learn to deal with the physical and emotional transitions you are walking through. As your son grows stronger and more confident in his new form, he'll be able to reach you in more profound ways. Similarly, as you become more open to receiving his signs and messages, you will know it when his spirit is reaching out to you.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.